I also put a few more things up on Gumroad while I was mucking around, the Resonances are there, and Imogen Shroud, so if you’re in the mood for a big long vaguely post-apocalyptic dark fantasy kids-with-powers thing, (or cosplaying zombies), then go grab ’em. Episodic fiction experimentios Bright Battle Story and Death Theory and Remember When are also things that exist.

So I just hit publish on Neon Bug City, the next book set in the Charlotte Powers galaxy (although she’s had to give over the protagonist reins to Ezekeli “Ellie” Kane, professional sad old arsehole). It’s about giant ants and depression. I wasn’t going to put up a post until it was actually available but it turns out I didn’t post about putting out Treasure Guardians, which is weird because I could have sworn I did.

So well anyway. I did a book with my daughters and it turned out pretty okay. It’s called Treasure Guardians and it’s about a bunch of amnesiac kids fighting monsters for loot. You can go take a look at it riiiiiight here. This is my favourite chapter heading illustration from it:

The other thing is that I’ve started putting up stuff on Gumroad, which seems like a good sort of distribution bizzo even if the image server breaks every other day. Everything’s pay what you want starting from zero dollars and there are the first episodes of a couple of serial stories there, SRPG underdog sports story Bright Battle Story: Tactics Heart, horrible deathmurder killnasty Death Theory, and beautiful ugly teenage monster drama Remember When Things Weren’t Broken. These are being released on an interest system, by which I mean if there’s any interest I’ll keep putting them out. I’ll also be putting my other stuff on there in a haphazard once-I-get-around-to-it fashion. If there’s anything in particular you want to see then just tell me. You’d be astounded just how much influence the most throwaway comment can have on my habits. Charlotte Powers 5 got finished about three months early because of a random tweet from someone who liked the series.

Anyway, that’s about it for now. See you tomorrowish once Neon Bug City goes live.

The real problem is that once you get out of the habit of publishing it’s very difficult indeed to get back into that habit. Just writing stuff and then moving on to the next exciting thing is so much more fun. Probably part of the problem is a lack of audience, it’s not like anyone is clamouring for my next thing. I get the same feedback from writing something and setting it aside as I do from writing something and releasing it. This makes it difficult to put energy into publishing.

Energy. Yes. I don’t have much of that stuff. When I do have some, and the choice is between writing and not-writing, generally speaking not-writing doesn’t have much of a chance.

But anyway. It is important to publish. To judge a thing finished and release it into the wild. I’ve got quite a few things ready to shove out of the nest. Treasure Guardians, Bright Battle Story, Death Theory, this new exciting thing called Remember When Things Weren’t Broken, plus there’s the next book in the Charlotte Powers universe. It’s about monsters, and also giant ants.

Enough blathering, let’s make some promises. Seeing as we’re almost in February already I thought that’d be a good month in which to start doing stuff. I’m not sure how I’ll go about it, but I’ll probably start with the episodic stuff. Bright Battle Story: Tactics Heart, and Death Theory. Then probably Treasure Guardians, the book I wrote with my daughters. It’s pretty good. They had some wild ideas. Neon Bug City (the Charlotte Powers thing) needs more time, but maybe March or April for that one. Could be longer. Remember When Things Weren’t Broken I’ll probably just put out as I write it, I feel like it’s that sort of story and I need a bit of a shake up in that area.

Let’s just get this out of the way, One Girl Army is not Frog Fractions 2. Not even a little bit. (Or is it?) (No.) (But…?) (No.)

Anyway. One Girl Army. Charlotte Powers 6 (kind of). It’s not a journal story. But it is about Charlotte.

I feel a bit different towards this one. It’s the first book I’ve written where I feel like the thing I started off wanting to make turned out to be the thing I actually made. Usually it gets changed around a lot, or things don’t work out, or whatever, whatever, whatever. Not so in this case. The book I finished writing is the same one that I started writing. And it is finished. So now it’s time to let go. I’ve worked on it for so long, I’ve spent thousands of hours with it, I’ve read through it a dozen times and I still kind of want to read it again.

I really like this book. I’m very happy with it. I hope others enjoy it too.

Like this:

Just putting this up because it’s interesting the number of emails I’ve received—given that I don’t sell a lot of books therefore don’t have a lot of readers therefore do not, generally speaking, receive a lot of emails—concerning the evils of Amazon exclusivity and DRM and so on.

None of my books are DRMed, but there is a certain bound-to-Amazon quality about them. I mean you can take them off your Kindle and shove them into whatever else you’ve got, there’s nothing stopping you from doing that, but should my books suddenly and without warning vanish from Amazon, and if your Kindle exploded, and if you had no backup, they’d be gone.

Alternately, you might just have a problem with Amazon. Or not own a Kindle. Or just not have any money. Or have money, but don’t particularly want to spend it on my books.

So, this is me saying that if you ever want any of my books for whatever reason, just ask for them. I can convert to epub fairly easily (although I can’t guarantee the quality, they SEEM fine but I’ve never actually looked at them on an epub device because all I have is an increasingly creaky Kindle 3) (I like buttons) or possibly to other formats? I haven’t looked into it, but if you’ve got something that uses a format other than mobi or epub I’ll certainly investigate the possibility of conversion.

In a soonish kind of timeframe I’ll be putting my books up for download in a centralish kind of location, most likely cloverisland.co.nz. Until then (and even afterwards) the quickest way to reach me is probably Twitter, @BJKWhite, or you can email me at theauthorperson@cloverisland.co.nz.

So yes. If you want my books, you can buy them on Amazon. Or just ask me for them. Or fairly soon just go and download them. This does mean that I’ve had to take them out of the KDP program, so they’re no longer available to borrow. (In Amazon country you follow Amazon rules.) I’ll also be slapping a creative commons license on them (non-commercial share alike etc etc details to follow) so do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law (although don’t pretend you wrote them or sell them or anything obviously).

One other thing, in light of recent TPPA-ish issues. I’m kind of a big believer in, what to call it, guiltless influence? Freedom of ideas? Like if you read one of my books and you think “That was okay but I could do way more with that concept” then you totally should. Take whatever you want from anything I’ve made. Use it however you like. Ideas are important but only doing matters. You can’t take my finished books and put your name on them or sell them. But you can take the ideas I used and create your own things from them, and put your name on those, and sell them if you want.

So that’s it. Feel free to share my books, pinch anything you like from them for your own stuff, go forth, create, fill the world with stories.

Bright Battle Story: Tactics Heart, SRPG underdog sports story thing, episodic format, eleven episodes in the first season and then if people like it I’ll write more and if they don’t like it I’ll cry. They’re way too long, the episodes, I think the first one’s like fifteen thousand words, it’s just ridiculous. It’s bonkers! But it’s a pretty neat story and the characters are fun. Maybe a fortnightly release schedule? Read it online or download a mobi or epub or whatever, probably I won’t put every individual episode on Amazon but maybe some kind of bundle. The thing is that I really like how I’ve got the ebook episodes formatted, there’s a little end of episode next episode preview and everything, like in anime! Oh don’t pretend like you haven’t always wanted to do that in a thing you made. I’m not alone in this. (Although it turned out to be impossible to include an ending song. I mean I could’ve put like an ending poem in there at the end of each episode? And indeed tried just that? But it felt wrong.)

Death Theory! Death Theory. Death Theory. Jungle nightmare fantasy survival horror thing. Shaping up kind of nicely? Maybe? One hopes? Probably a similar release schedule to BBS:TH, fortnightly, maybe on alternating Fridays or something. Not sure how long it’ll be, twelve episodes? Maybe? And if it works out I might write more in that particular world. Read online, epub, mobi, etc, etc.

Treasure Guardians! It’s a story I’m writing with my daughters. I wasn’t going to publish it but they insisted, so. Probably better as a novel rather than episodic but I don’t know. Could be fun. Up to ooh I think we’re on chapter sixteen now? We could just keep going forever, the ideas these two girls have are mad.

Charlotte Powers: One Girl Army! It’s so nearly finished but I don’t want to let go. You know, over the past five years and fourteen books I may not have achieved any kind of sales success, but I have gotten really, really good at writing stories that appeal to me. Anyway, a couple more weeks maybe? It really is pretty much done. Charlotte’s life as a freelance social worker in a rebuilding world. Kind of downbeat. Kind of melancholy. Kind of bittersweet. One Girl Army; a story of letting go.

Sales! I sold three books this month, making it officially my worst month for sales ever. I mean you hear about the long tail but this is ridiculous. Still, just the time to try something different, eh chums? You know, sometimes I can’t believe I’ve got fourteen books out there. That’s mad. And they don’t sell, that’s even madder! I must be doing this for love because it sure ain’t for the money.

Until next time, be excellent to yourselves.

And each other.

With love,

The Author Person

Like this:

So it’s been a while. Years, actually. Charlotte Powers 5 was the last thing I actually published and that was, oh gosh, like December 2013? 2014 the first year in which nothing was published since I started this wacky ol’ author adventure. Of course that’s not to say I haven’t been writing. It’s just that nothing I’ve written felt particularly publishable—not bad, just mostly odd. And when I say mostly odd oh gosh let’s just start this over.

Hello. I am an author person. Over the past two years or so I’ve mostly been working on odd things that don’t translate particularly well to the whole put a thing on Amazon in case people like it system. Episodic stories? Serial novels. I’ve kind of been hanging around in the hopes that someone invents something that makes it really fun and easy to put out a serial episodic thing but y’know, bleh.

The other thing is that a feeling has been building, for years actually, the feeling that I’ve been doing this wrong from the very start. The whole charge a price for a book thing. I don’t know. I just kind of want to write things and then have people read them if they want to. And then maybe give me money if they feel like it? That’d be nice.

So I think probably what’s going to happen is that I’m going to put up all my books for free, in whatever formats people want, and shove a creative commons license on them, and start releasing these episodic things I’ve been doing, and maybe throw a couple of Twine things into the mix because Twine is pretty fun, and maybe possibly start a Patreon. I’m not sure. It’s all a bit up in the air at the moment.

In any case I’ll be releasing a new book soon, a Charlotte Powers story called One Girl Army about her life as a freelance social worker in Harbour City, and all the kinds of trouble a well meaning but auratically unsound Charlotte can get herself into. I’ll also be putting out, in some kind of format, at least two episodic stories. One is Bright Battle Story: Tactics Heart, which I’ve been working on for so long that at this point it’s genuinely embarrassing. I have eleven episodes of it anyway, a decent sort of first series. BBS:TH is an underdog sports story about characters living in an SRPG world. It might have niche appeal? Or the niche it appeals to might be limited to a single author person whose name rhymes with Pen Bright. I honestly have no idea. But I’d like it to be out there. The second is a story I’ve had in my head for, oh, like half a decade now? It’s called Death Theory. It’s the most brutal, violentest, sweariest, ugliest thing I’ve yet written. It’s also written in first person present with like a dozen viewpoint characters, most of whom die horribly in the first few episodes. I like it a lot! Maybe other people will too. So that’ll be coming.

So yes. I’m still writing. I have been writing. New stuff is coming. I’m not sure what form it will take. Maybe a large moving torb, or a giant sloar. Books will remain on Amazon but will also be free. Patreon might be an option.